Monday, October 28, 2002
Memory
"You float like a feather, in a beautiful world...." (Radiohead, "Creep")
It's not that she's asleep. It's not that she's being rude. It's the feeling that comes over her....
Ever since...the white light. It's there...and suddenly she's in another world.
A flash of white. Where am I? A kitchen. It's all white, tile on the countertops, second floor, because the door is there and you can go down the back stairs. There's a kitchen table. Which house is it? I've forgotton. Running 'round. Yeah, 'cause I'm very little, just a wee lass, the counters are way above my head....Yellow. Things are turning yellow. Hey, I remember this place. 60th Street. My cousin's old house. The yellow kitchen table. We bobbed for apples one halloween. That was fun. Something my mom never let me do. The hallway, the pantry, bedrooms, bathroom, then living and dining room. I remember the sandbox and the church and the swingset and the landlord's garden....I remember Stowell. The kids my mom babysat. The grease fire. My brother, making Christmas cookies, we shared a room. I'd had an ugly wart on my foot, kept banging it against walls and doors to make it go away. After this though...the fire. Turned the oven "high" instead of "off". I was asleep, drifting, voices..."Wake up! Wake up! There's a fire!" My aunt, or my dad, or someone. I couldn't smell it. I didn't hear the smoke alarms. I smelled it when we ran outside, the sick and thick smell of grease burning. I could hear the alarms....Townhouse, Glenview. The kids next door. They never tanned, not even in summer, not even without sunblock. Never burned. Always white, pale. Parents would always scream. Death that year....
And then someone brought up the house. The blue house that caught on fire and scared the hell out of Crazy Girl.
You see, Crazy Girl wants you to think she's crazy. She really isn't. It's been years of knowing ghosts and getting used to that idea. She still isn't used to it. She doesn't want to be comfortable with it. It's not something that you're supposed to talk about, at least to people. Years of being teased at grade school, parents who never had a clue how badly she was tourtured, the evil games she played with friends, all of this taught her to keep her mouth shut about everything. Make believe? It might have been, if it still didn't happen to her all these years later. And she didn't want anyone to take her seriously. What if it had really been all in her head? What if it wasn't real? There's only one alternative to that, one that frightens her.
But she has to go. She has to go to the houses. She has to know...as if they will tell her. The graveyard did. She heard them whisper. She wasn't going to tell her friend that. They were whispering like they always do...like they have a secret that they don't want her to hear. Maybe they know something she doesn't...the blue house. She will have to go. She will remember. And that, too, scares her more than anything.
So maybe she isn't crazy. She would like to think so, but then again, she's in love, so she thinks that maybe the not crazy arguement is false. Crazy Girl is afraid that he'll find a saner, smarter, prettier woman and just leave her in the dust. Or, if that happened, she'd have to cut him off. Crazy Girl can get jealous, a feeling that she avoids if she can. She doesn't assume that she will ever be the winner, so she automatically conceedes to losing. After all, it's what she's used to....
"You float like a feather, in a beautiful world...." (Radiohead, "Creep")
It's not that she's asleep. It's not that she's being rude. It's the feeling that comes over her....
Ever since...the white light. It's there...and suddenly she's in another world.
A flash of white. Where am I? A kitchen. It's all white, tile on the countertops, second floor, because the door is there and you can go down the back stairs. There's a kitchen table. Which house is it? I've forgotton. Running 'round. Yeah, 'cause I'm very little, just a wee lass, the counters are way above my head....Yellow. Things are turning yellow. Hey, I remember this place. 60th Street. My cousin's old house. The yellow kitchen table. We bobbed for apples one halloween. That was fun. Something my mom never let me do. The hallway, the pantry, bedrooms, bathroom, then living and dining room. I remember the sandbox and the church and the swingset and the landlord's garden....I remember Stowell. The kids my mom babysat. The grease fire. My brother, making Christmas cookies, we shared a room. I'd had an ugly wart on my foot, kept banging it against walls and doors to make it go away. After this though...the fire. Turned the oven "high" instead of "off". I was asleep, drifting, voices..."Wake up! Wake up! There's a fire!" My aunt, or my dad, or someone. I couldn't smell it. I didn't hear the smoke alarms. I smelled it when we ran outside, the sick and thick smell of grease burning. I could hear the alarms....Townhouse, Glenview. The kids next door. They never tanned, not even in summer, not even without sunblock. Never burned. Always white, pale. Parents would always scream. Death that year....
And then someone brought up the house. The blue house that caught on fire and scared the hell out of Crazy Girl.
You see, Crazy Girl wants you to think she's crazy. She really isn't. It's been years of knowing ghosts and getting used to that idea. She still isn't used to it. She doesn't want to be comfortable with it. It's not something that you're supposed to talk about, at least to people. Years of being teased at grade school, parents who never had a clue how badly she was tourtured, the evil games she played with friends, all of this taught her to keep her mouth shut about everything. Make believe? It might have been, if it still didn't happen to her all these years later. And she didn't want anyone to take her seriously. What if it had really been all in her head? What if it wasn't real? There's only one alternative to that, one that frightens her.
But she has to go. She has to go to the houses. She has to know...as if they will tell her. The graveyard did. She heard them whisper. She wasn't going to tell her friend that. They were whispering like they always do...like they have a secret that they don't want her to hear. Maybe they know something she doesn't...the blue house. She will have to go. She will remember. And that, too, scares her more than anything.
So maybe she isn't crazy. She would like to think so, but then again, she's in love, so she thinks that maybe the not crazy arguement is false. Crazy Girl is afraid that he'll find a saner, smarter, prettier woman and just leave her in the dust. Or, if that happened, she'd have to cut him off. Crazy Girl can get jealous, a feeling that she avoids if she can. She doesn't assume that she will ever be the winner, so she automatically conceedes to losing. After all, it's what she's used to....
# posted by Crazy Girl @ 20:59 
